Cryptocurrency is a decentralized form of digital money with roughly 20,000 different types in circulation — Bitcoin and Ethereum being the most common. Unlike most modern currencies that rely on a central banking system and authority to manage and maintain value, cryptocurrency distributes this task across online “miners” and is frequently powered by blockchain, an open, distributed ledger of transactions shared across a network. Tech gurus first embraced the digital “cash” for its representation of the borderless digital economy with a currency that bypassed the control of governments and financial institutions. It quickly grew from a digital concept to reach a market cap exceeding $3 trillion at its peak in November 2021, according to reports by Forbes.
This industry has not only been rife with controversy surrounding its volatility but also its energy consumption. When cryptocurrency was first conceived, few of us could have predicted that it would scale in popularity to levels that cause environmental concern. The rapid rise in crypto valuation triggered a race for crypto “miners” to compete in solving high-compute math problems to earn their digital tokens. The exponential rise in computing power to solve these problems, naturally, has been powered by a similar increase in electricity use.